Welcome To Little Bit of Wonderful!

Welcome! I am so excited to share this special collection of my paintings with you. I hope they put a smile on your face and you feel they’re a little bit of wonderful.

I started my first painting in 2001. I was living in New Zealand and had an empty apartment. I thought it would be an interesting challenge to create a painting for my wall. I invested in an easel, some paints and a whole lot of soap (oil paints get everywhere!)

6 months later I had my first painting. From that point on I tried to create at least one painting a year.

My paintings have been described as Norman Rockwell meets Dr Seuss with Disney Princesses. I’m proud to be mentioned in the same sentence with those amazing Visionaries.

Please enjoy this site and all the inspiring things I’ve collected. If you want to know more about me, please visit MikeLMurphy.com.

Stay inspired,

Mike L. Murphy

My Paintings

Smart Is Sexy. Being a big Einstein nerd, I wanted to create an image that featured E = mc 2. I also happen to think teachers are cool, and perhaps my inner teenager was harking back to Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher. Here’s the first concept sketch I did in photoshop: And here’s some reference I found of the crazy math scribblings that would be on the chalkboard: During this time I found

I Love Monet! One of my biggest artistic inspirations is Impressionism. It’s so magical to me. Claude Monet was the definite master of this painting style, so I wanted to create a painting in this style. I used my friend’s photo, a Polish actress (Ania), as the reference point. I also used this Etta James album cover’s colors as inspiration: Unlike all my other paintings, I created this one in

Let The Sun Shine! Then I started gathering reference. Images like these inspire my imagination and also let me base my concepts off reality. Final Painting Once all the planning and painting is done I’m left with a final image! Enjoy! If you like this painting, check out The Teacher!

Shake It! As fate would have it, we were the only members of the ‘public’ dining that night. You see, the place was filled with a makeshift reunion of all the belly dancers that had every danced there. That meant it was me, my sister, my folks and 40 scantily clad and really hot dancers. I was in heaven! For about 3 hours every lady in the place wanted to dance with me. It was

Singing The Blues… Most of my art is very optimistic. But I wanted to go a little dark (I know it’s ironic, since my version of dark is still a Disney princess looking forlorn). During the time of this painting I was taking acting classes… One of the girls in the class, CC, was incredibly hot and very unique. She was a jazz singer who spent a fair time

I painted this ‘actress’ back in 2003 when I was shooting my short film Rose. My lead actress Erika posed live for the painting (therefore I don’t have the original pics of the session). The head was based off my girlfriend at the time, and I chose the pink colors as my homage to the legendary artist Frank Frazetta. Here is my final painting: If you like this painting, check

Take It Easy! A long time ago (seems like forever), I lived in New Zealand. Just like with my painting, The Stewardess, I had a big apartment with empty walls! Oh the horror! So what did I do? I painted of course! This was my second painting, and since I was still getting my bearings, I made it fairly small. It’s about 24 inches square. For the subject matter, I

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